


We take what we're given

by FLWhite



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Enemies to Lovers, Implied spanking, Inappropriate Use of the Force, M/M, Masturbation, Oral Sex, Post-Canon, also thanks Luke Skywalker for being a kinda creepy uncle, is that an erection or is the Force just strong with you, is that astral projection or are you just sleepwalking, mindfuckery, open fracture/serious impact injuries, thanks Wookieepedia, these people got issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 16:23:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13639944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FLWhite/pseuds/FLWhite
Summary: Only when you give up goals and desires, and seek instead to give yourself to those who need you, with trust in your heart, will it come to you.On the Star Destroyer Conqueror in the aftermath of Crait, Kylo Ren tries to meditate as Skywalker had. Things take an unusual turn. Specifically, a turn in the direction of General Hux's sleeping quarters.The Force works in mysterious ways (like by being a shipper), and no body is a cage.





	We take what we're given

***

Fury crept crimson into the edges of Kylo Ren's vision as he watched Rey watching him.

 

Then the door of the _Millennium Falcon_ sealed her away, and he screamed. It was distant, unsatisfying, like he was underwater, or buried in snow.

 

He saw Skywalker's awful smirk. Then, his father. His mother. Rey, again. All laughing at him. He screamed again, and again, and again, his arms crossing over his body, rocking on his feet. Then he clutched at his side, but his saber wasn't there. Cresting a wave of rage, he raised his empty fist and punched, lunging, at the nearest wall, and was suddenly falling.

 

It wasn't a long way down. With a grunt, he found himself sprawled headlong on the floor of his quarters, jaw cushioned by his sheets. More accurately, the remnants of his sheets. Shreds of finest jet synthsilk swirled like dark snow as he stiffly found his footing. He'd have to ping for a new set. Again.

 

A glance at the small red chrono indicated that he'd been asleep no more than three hours. His anger, ebbing, took with it his strength, and he let himself drop onto the ravaged bed with an ungainly _flump_. He stretched his arms above him, listlessly. He hadn't left these rooms since that day--the day he had failed. Hardly necessary. There was the sprawling training chamber, the walls of which were currently charred and skeletal from saber damage; an enormous refresher with sonics and an antique-style jet-tub; and this bed, so large that it made him feel like a child when he permitted himself to collapse into it after being wrung utterly of his sweat and curses and tears in the training chamber.

 

Fifth night in a row, waking like this. Every night since the day he'd lost everything.

 

Not that it mattered. Galactic Supreme Leaders did many things, but one of them surely wasn't feeling vaguely guilty for wrecking fancy bedding.

 

That made his mind, especially disobedient in its fatigue, drift to the awful shit that Skywalker had made them all sleep on, as children--cots wrapped sharp and tight with stuff worse than Zeyd-cloth. He'd rather have slept on the dirt of the barn where they kept the bantha cows. Whatever it was around those narrow little bunks was rough and chilly and easily tangled and always leaving its achy red weave against their cheeks.

 

Anger, or a headache, throbbed again behind his eyes. He snarled. It wasn't quiet, and it should have been at least a little satisfying, but there was no one to hear him. Instead, in his ears echoed a memory: the voice of his disgusting uncle, pompous, scolding him, something about releasing the mind from the flesh, a stillness and a distancing. _Let go, give up,_ Skywalker said. _Allow yourself to feel the Nothingness, which is also the Everythingness._

 

Yes, a lecture. On meditation. More Jedi shit. He'd been fourteen, maybe fifteen, and was caught sparring or climbing a cliff-face or Force-wrestling again. Fuck meditation, he said to the man in his head, but Skywalker went merrily on like a musicbox gone rogue. His own voice--no, that of Ben Solo, who is dead, whom he killed--reedy, cracking, joined his uncle's in the remembered dialogue. _I can't, I keep thinking about things. And letting go--that's not making me_ stronger _, Unc--Master._

Skywalker, sternly: _Ben, this is a realm of highest power, no less than saber fights and lightning bolts. Only true Masters may walk through the Force while they live, across the universe in an instant even as their bodies remain still._

 

He gasped out loud, eyes wide. Somehow he'd begun to drift off without realizing it; even anger couldn't sustain him when he'd only twelve or fifteen hours of sleep, total, and all of them bad, since Crait.

 

He'd never been able to think straight without sleeping--another repulsive Jedi training thing that fraud made them all do, the great Deprivation or some shit, that he'd failed at.

 

How stupid, not to have seen sooner. Then again, all he'd been able to really see was the pulsing red of hatred and regret, and, dimly, his fingers tight around the hilt of his saber as it sheared through the panelling of the training chamber like they were made of overcooked Nuna, his fists and feet smashing the sparring droids, wrenching their wiring so that it spilled out of them like guts.

 

But now every nerve sang and he felt himself grinning, a strange stretching in his cheeks. Yes. He had it. He'd have _them_ , and _her_ , even if she'd shut her mind to his; if Skywalker could do it, then so could he. There was no doubt that he was stronger, many times stronger, than Skywalker had ever been--otherwise, why'd the old bastard have been so sick with jealousy all these years?

 

He'd learn to do what Skywalker'd done, and follow them to the ends of the Unknown Regions if they tried to run there. Triumphantly, the Supreme Leader of the known galaxy fell asleep.

 

***

Armitage Hux thought of himself, if nothing else, as a fair man. He esteemed the excellent and rewarded them, but he felt little hesitation in demoting and punishing the lazy and incompetent. So he was slightly annoyed at himself for not being able to hold back a glower at his least favorite aide, a Sub-Lieutenant Gannon--or was it Granven? He also hated not remembering the names of his subordinates (a sign of mental laziness), and ended up glowering again. The boy was one of those whelps with perfect marks on every test, but with about as much backbone or independent thinking as a slug.

 

Sub-Lieutenant Gannevon saluted again, gulping as quietly as he could. "Sir. Urgent. Guards posted on Kylo--Supreme Leader Ren's quarters report that he's come out."

 

What felt to be most of Hux's blood surged toward his feet, and he barely caught himself with both hands on the nearest console. "Where was he going, Lieutenant?"

 

"Er--they didn't ask--"

 

Before he could begin to construct an appropriately condescending reply that would demote Geneven or Gonvon to sub-radar technician, he heard a familiar tread in the long corridor leading to the bridge of the _Conqueror_. It was advancing much faster than usual. He drew a deep belly breath in case the maniac should decide to choke him on sight.

 

Hux choked, entirely on his own, when the man appeared. He'd been braced to see much on his archrival's scarred face: rage, certainly; disgust, its natural state; even grief, perhaps. But Kylo Ren looked like none of these things. He was beaming.

 

It was a nauseating spectacle. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he couldn't help noticing how fine Ren's teeth were. Pleasantly straight and white. The ear-to-ear smile made it possible to see a disconcerting number of them.

 

***

Hux sneezed several times in a row in the refresher that night: probably coming down with something. Anybody would, if they had to spend a whole day with a _bubbly_ incarnation of darkness. Ren had positively _bounced_ around the bridge, getting in everyone's way, and at one point had even _asked Hux if he needed a hand_ _with anything_.

 

Everyone had toiled away, quietly panicking, as though they were being borne down on by an armada. He'd caught even the more careful and dutiful navigators whispering as Ren laughed out loud, standing by himself at the largest viewport and gazing into the infinite void.

 

Perhaps Crait had finally broken the man, not that there was much intact in there to start with.

 

With a groan, he scrubbed a hand over his face, chin to forehead, twice, then ran it through his hair, remembering the afternoon.

 

Near the hour for him to go off-duty, he had had enough; he'd risk being strangled before his subordinates in his own captain's chair if it meant an end to this, the worst possible version of Kylo Ren. And there was the very distant possibility that Happy Ren might be able to be talked with like a normal human being, and, if so, they had to discuss what the next move should be. Contacting some of their sleeper agents in the Outer Rim, perhaps, about the movements of the filthy Resistance survivors, and heading them off. It would be disaster if they made it into the Unknown Regions. What an irony that would be, if they hid where the Order had once nursed its strength.

 

Armitage Hux thought of himself, if nothing else, as a tenacious man.

 

"Supreme Leader," he had begun smoothly enough.

 

Ren spun like a column of black liquid, his silken cloak rippling around him. Supreme Leadership had not inspired him to don appropriate attire, of course. Hux _knew_ he had proper uniforms. Ages ago, under Snoke's holographic eye, he'd watched (internally sneering) Ren (then still wearing his asinine helmet) kneel and accept the full wardrobe: three duty uniforms, one combat suit, and parade dress, all branded with a general's insignia. But no, Ren today had been in his usual black velvoid stuff and that absolutely ridiculous cloak, much too long to be practical, much too light to be warm. "General Hux."

 

It had given Hux goosebumps to hear that voice pronounce his own with a _smile_ in it. The small hairs rose again on the backs of his arms even as he lay abed, remembering.

 

He had had to clear his throat. Twice. "Supreme Leader, we await your command regarding the escaped Resistance scum." Ren had merely grinned. Hux, finding himself unable to look away, had rambled on, wishing he could throttle himself. "I advise following up on the cells planted on Rattatak, Rakata Prime, and Dantooine in addition to upping the reward promised for intelligence that we've already advertised on all systems, lest the few survivors flee to--"

 

"Don't worry, General." How could the grin have gotten _wider_? There was surely something salacious about it. The golden-brown eyes practically _sparkled_.

 

Hux thanked every deity that he was not prone to sweating--at least not where anyone could see, though he couldn't bear to imagine what colors his face was turning. "Sir?"

 

"I said, don't worry." Ren chortled. "I have a solution." He turned again, having first gathered his cloak in a gloved hand for maximum effect. "I'll have found them by the time you're on duty again." Then he had swept away. Hux clenched his jaw as all eyes on the bridge shot to him. Presently he'd been able to shout "back to your posts" without allowing his voice to quaver, or at least not too much.

 

Lying in his bed, Hux quietly murmured a string of expletives, with his arm flung over his face. Why was everyone so fucking useless? Why did he have to be put through all this? His last thought before he plunged into sleep, a tiny whisper that crinkled his brow as he drifted off, was _I want him to say it again, like that_.

 

***

He'd been frothing with the urge to try it ever since he'd thought of it, of course. But he knew it was foolish to try unless he were physically quiescent. And he had wanted to show himself off. Set them all up for the magic. For his power. He liked seeing everyone's mealy little faces, especially Hux's tight-lipped puzzlement, badly disguised as disapproval. The tickle of their confused thoughts as he stood among them wasn't an unpleasant sensation. He enjoyed the waves of repulsion and curiosity and fear from Hux in particular.

 

The quickest way to still his body was returning to the training chamber, and he spent himself there, without reserve. It felt odd to do so while _elated_ , instead of _enraged_. He hadn't really felt like this since he'd been a kid. It took longer to exhaust himself. The Force pumped like blood through him, making him shout with glee as he spun and kicked and leapt and swung. At last he felt it fizzle, some. Panting, he told the room to end the session and lay down directly on the floor, slick in spots with his own sweat. With an indulgent smile, he waved away the cleaner droids that crowded near. He shut his eyes.

 

 _Nothingness._ He let his mind flicker. _The silence, the black gulfs between stars._ He lay some long minutes, growing cold.

 

Nothing happened.

 

He sucked on his teeth, opening his eyes again. All he saw was the smooth white ceiling--fully restored, of course, after what he did to it the day before. On it, Rey, then Skywalker, then his father, then his mother. Same tired holoshow. "Stop," he said to himself. Squeezed his lids shut.

 

 _It's not about_ wanting, he heard. Damn Skywalker. Haunting him. The thought made him shoot upright, shivering, fearing he'd see his uncle smirking and glowing blue in the corner. Of course, the training chamber was perfectly empty. But the lecture continued. _It's not about wanting, Ben, or taking. It's about giving. Offering up, without hoping for anything in return._

 

"Fuck you," he whispered to the silent room.

 

_Only when you give up goals and desires, and seek instead to give yourself to those who need you, with trust in your heart, will it come to you._

He screamed with frustration, weakly. No goals, no desires, such typical Jedi shit, all of it so fake. The fucking hypocrites. "You're so full of shit," he told the memory of his uncle.

 

It was kind of true, though. He was thinking too hard. He'd come too close on Crait and the taste of almost-victory was bitterer than he'd ever imagined. But he would get closer yet, he would find them--he just had to drown out the old phony with something else and then he'd be _there_.

 

He ran both hands across his chilly belly, his shoulders: it was still his body that was holding him back. It wasn't quiet, yet. One hand brushed against a nipple, firm from cold, and he realized how to do it. Simple enough.

 

Gingerly, he unfastened his heavy belt and undid the catches of his light sparring trousers, under which he habitually wore nothing. He wasn't hard at all, but that wasn't surprising.

 

He didn't know how often the Force-ignorant did this--someone with a rod up his ass like Hux, probably never. When he was training heavily, or on missions, it was as though everything went into that, and nothing remained to be released through masturbation. Trying would just result in a sore cock and falling asleep. But a little twitch went through him now, as he tightened his fingers.

 

He closed his eyes again as he began to stroke himself firmly, and thought about what he always thought about. A body, faceless, indistinct, under his, in the dark. Always he was the one entering it. Heat and sharp small noises. Him, masterful. He could feel its pleasure in his mind, rising like rich bubbles of increasing size in translucent oil, or a flight of staccato notes played on horns of sharply growing size.

 

Between the raking currents of pleasure from his own hand around his cock and the echo he felt in the other's mind, he bucked and squeezed and pulled once hard on his balls like he always did and came. It'd been a while. In his throes, he thought he saw one splash of come shoot past his eyes and into his hair.

 

He lay, deliciously, almost unable to move.

 

 _Only when you give up wanting, and want only to give,_ he heard, and before he could shout at that voice, or at himself for still _not fucking being able to stop_ , he felt himself fizzing at the edges. Suddenly there was utter darkness around him, and silence, and the end of all sensation. No cold from the training room floor. No wet warmth on his hands, stomach, and chest from where he'd carelessly splattered himself.

 

He was suddenly somewhere else, still or again lying on the ground. Cautiously, with great tiredness beginning to be leavened by great excitement, he got to his hands and knees, then knelt halfway. It was a very dark room. Vacuum-black.

 

Though his eyes shouldn't have been able to see, used as they were to the brilliantly lit training room where they'd just been, he could pick out furnishings. A series of folding shelves mounted into the far wall. Several sets of doors, all tightly shut, their control panels dimmed to nothing. A bed.

 

The excitement began to slowly implode as he looked down at its occupant, and turned to infinite motes of space dust when he realized who it was.

 

For once in his life he could do nothing. His limbs refused movement and his throat denied him the scream that was straining to escape. He felt like another piece of furniture, one that clashed with the neat angles of the rest, as the sleeper turned, mumbling, and began clumsily to sit up.

 

Armitage Hux didn't notice his visitor at first; he was turning on and checking the chrono on his bedside stand and groaning. But when he did, he also froze. Blue eyes wide as moons, he croaked, "Ren?"

 

***

There was absolute silence for a moment.

 

Hux liked to mute all the consoles and turn the ventilation to its lowest setting before turning in, and he'd ordered a special triple layer of Plasfoam soundproofing on walls, floor and ceiling. He rued that obsession with quiet now, as he could hear his heart beat madly in what felt like had to be its final paroxysm.

 

Or perhaps he'd go blind with staring first. He found himself not even able to blink, to shut out for a moment the sight of his guest, looming dimly above him in the weak glow of the chrono.

 

Ren looked strange. He wasn't smiling anymore. His hair looked like a child's diorama of chaos. It was hard to be sure in the darkness of the room—Hux cursed himself for that, too—but there was something odd about Ren's face. It didn't seem quite the right shape, at first, but after a few painful moments, he realized that it had no scar.

 

And that face also looked strange sitting on top of Ren's half-nude body instead of where he usually saw it, poking out of the usual high-necked, tight-belted, full-gloved outfit. Against such a lot of skin, Ren's face also looked for some reason younger. The chrono's light limned a shockingly contoured landscape on Ren, neck to hip, all high plateaus and deep valleys of muscle, terrain that appeared to be shiny in places. Wet. A streak of something in the hair, too.

 

Slowly Ren opened his mouth, as if not sure how to use it. If it weren't Ren—if it were anyone else in the galaxy, parting those lasciviously full lips like that—the small motion and moist sound of flesh on flesh would be unbearably erotic.

 

As it was, Hux found, with his heart somehow pounding faster still, his disobedient prick was complaining against the seams of his pajama bottoms. "Hux," he heard, and _fuck a leprous Banta sideways_ he was full-on hard.

 

He wanted to say ten thousand things, mainly along the lines of _what the fuck are you doing, where the fuck did your scar go_ , _how the fuck is this happening to me,_ and most of all _why the fuck are you naked, that should be a court-martialing offense just by itself_. Instead, all that came out was the lovechild of a gasp and a moan.

 

"Why am I here," Ren said. It hardly sounded like him, Hux thought, but perhaps that was because the words were uttered without an iota of feeling—neither anger nor confusion. They were said as though Hux were a slow-witted pupil and Ren were a schoolmaster who already knew the answer, but did not want to give away how he felt about it.

 

"Kriff if I know," he managed. The intensity of his erection, at least, did bring him back to schoolboy days at Arkanis. He could swear that Ren's eyes were glowing in the dark, predatory, but also somehow soft.

 

They grew larger as Ren bent toward him, levered his body onto the bed so that their faces were an arm's length apart, then a hand's length, and then nearly touching. Before the golden intensity of those unblinking eyes enveloped him, he noted that the bed did sag, with a painfully ordinary little creak, under Ren's weight. He also noticed a scent, like wet earth, which he'd never associated with Ren before.

 

Then the intensity was all around him, suspending him like an ancient insect in a hunk of Dathomir amber. The amber turned into scores of long fingers, and the sensation of these wrapping around and slipping into the crevices of his brain forced another strangled sound from him. "What are you _doing_?"

 

Ren replied from _inside_ him. _Finding out._

 

Hux curled his lip feebly. This would be nauseating if it weren't so overwhelmingly arousing at the same time.

 

 _You like this_ , Ren's mind-voice said. Again, totally expressionless. Hux chose to say nothing. _No, you don't need to talk. I can see that you like this._

The fingers were doing something slippery and slithery deep in his cerebral cortex. A manic impulse—perhaps simply his groin, taking over for his violated brain--seized him and made him grit out, "You don't need sorcerer tricks to see _that_ , sand for brains," and squeeze his ass to push his cock hard against what felt to be a solid Allacrete wall, but had to be a point somewhere between Ren's solar plexus and hipbone.

 

If this were a dream, it was a very warm, slightly damp one, and one capable of making an involuntary _oof_ when its side was slammed into. Some of the amber miasma receded. "You called me."

 

"I," he panted a syllable at a time, "have no idea what you're talking about."

 

"That's why—oh, you fucking old scumbag _._ " It was still like hearing Ren put through a very low-quality holo. The words came at a human pace, but for some reason did not ring quite human to Hux's ear. For one, what should have been indignation sounded more like a singsong. It was like all the sullen darkness he knew well in that voice had packed up and gone to charm school. "I hope you're being picked apart by deathbirds somewhere."

 

More of the mind-fingers were pulling away. Hux sucked in a lungful of air. "Are you talking to me?"

 

"Of course not. I'm talking to Skywalker."

 

"Ah." At this point, Ren could start talking about cyborg kitten space commandos and Hux'd say the same thing.

 

"I need to go." Ren made to slide backward and stand; even while the thin remnants of rational thought in his mind screamed _No_ , Hux reached out both hands and seized Ren by the elbows. _What is going on_ , he tried to say, to Ren, to himself. Instead, he discovered a fount of strength from stars know where and launched himself upward again, this time face-first. His mouth made contact with one side of the beautiful absurdity of what passed for the same orifice on Ren.

 

If this were a dream, it was a dream that was proving every secret whispering sneaking thought that he'd ever had to be correct, he noted with some pride. Ren's lips were just as yielding as they always looked, slightly moist, slightly salty. He fell back onto his pillows, knuckles white as he clenched his fingertips into Ren's arms. He'd never had this three-dimensional a dream before, either.

 

The dark man allowed himself to be pulled back down, and landed on his elbows, face again three fingers'-breadth from Hux's, hair swinging curtainlike between them. Ren's breath smelled of one of the few unadulterated good things that Hux could remember from his boyhood: cinnamon Bama bars. One on his birthday, one on Empire Day. He'd unwrap them one precious block at a time, and, in spite of all temptation to suck or chew, would hold it on his tongue until it dissolved. That way it'd last a quarter-hour, easy.

 

"Hux." He could swear it was now the same tone from earlier that day, not the weird inflectionless droning. The smile, like a blaster bolt, like a painfully bright beam of sun, alien and horrifically seductive, was not worn on the impassive face that hovered so close that he was going cross-eyed trying to look at it; it instead came at him from the single syllable that was his name, shooting straight for his heart. Or, rather, his crotch.

 

Armitage Hux thought of himself, if nothing else, as a dauntless man.

 

With the final ounces of his self-control yawing under the impossible weight of his lust, Hux said, in a stuttering rush, "If you're going to stay, you might as well finish what you started."

 

***

There were some very strange things going on here, Kylo Ren mused as he fellated his mortal enemy.

 

One: he couldn't leave. Of course Hux's weak little hands buried in his hair weren't what were holding him here, sprawled half-naked across the General's bed, rucking up the perfectly square-tucked sheets. An asshole's sheets.

 

He'd tried to pull away another two or three times after he'd been stopped on the first go. He could _see_ himself lying full-length on the floor of his own training room, in his mind. But Hux would make some pathetic mewling sound or clutch at him and he'd be back plying his tongue and teeth against a nipple or leaving bruises with his lips on a collarbone.

 

Two: he wasn't mad about it. Or worried. Or… _anything_. He'd felt absolutely nothing from the moment he realized it was Hux in this bed. He cursed Skywalker under his breath when he understood that it was Hux's _wanting_ that had pulled him here, because those were the words that rose into his mouth. But he could feel none of the usual venom boiling behind them.

 

His body did not feel the fatigue of his training. His groin was as cold and still as an airless moon. But still he lapped at Hux's shaft, prodding with tongue-tip at the slick salty slit, wriggling his lips around the feverish corona. The only thing that was certain and sure was Hux. Hux's mind, spinning wild with hunger.

 

It was like he was watching a holo, except he was in it. It was like a dream, except he could feel Hux's moans reverberating from his tongue to his toes and the scratchy standard-issue sheets under his chest. It was like a simulator, except he usually felt _something_ in those. Usually lots of somethings.

 

Most importantly, he'd never been in the process of making a man on his list of top three most-detested sentient life-forms in the Galaxy teeter on the brink of orgasmic inevitability in any holo or dream or sim.

 

Admittedly, he'd never brought anybody to the brink of orgasmic inevitability before. He realized he was doing an excellent job, but felt no sense of superiority, nor frustration that he felt no sense of superiority, both of which he would have expected of himself. There were only what felt like a small, matter-of-fact pair of words scrolling steadily across his brain: good; continue.

 

One of his hands was rubbing and tugging Hux's balls, hard. Two fingers of the other were pressing and flicking at Hux's taint and hole, working inside every so often, then teasingly dancing away. And his lips were clamped around Hux's cock as he let it be thrust, accompanied by yelps of pleasure from its owner, as far as it would reach down his throat. Which was impressively far. It was evident to even the eyes of the Force-ignorant that the man wore big padded coats and talked from low his chest to hide his bony body. So, it was easy to forget that Hux was about the same height as him. And, evidently, not dissimilarly endowed.

 

He was letting his mouth dribble as Hux thrust faster, for the wetness and the juicy squelching sounds. He did not have to reach into the man's mind to hear _yes, like that, more_ ; Hux was chanting those words out loud, between gulping breaths.

 

He also did not require the Force to feel Hux topple from the brink into the chasm: the balls tightened against his palm, the cock jolted deep in his throat, and Hux _shrieked_. Shrieked his name. Incredibly loudly. One wailing "Ren," the "n" spiraling into a groan that seemed to go on for a week. Finally, Hux's fingers loosened their grasp in his hair. He stood up, blinking as he swallowed, then the fizzing feeling overcame him again, much faster than before, almost painfully, and he tumbled into oblivion.

***

Hux overslept his alarm by nearly two hours.

 

He threw the chrono across the room and sprinted into the refresher, afraid to even glance at his comlinks where they lay neatly on his desk until he had at least cleaned up. From the corner of his eye, he could see red and yellow flashes in unusual quantity. _Not good_.

 

Even less good: he was covered in a fearsome quantity of dried semen, sweat, and for whatever reason every muscle from belly to knee was sore, as though he had been sprinting or riding a rodeo Thranta in his sleep. His nipples ached, hard as buttons.

 

Probably it'd have felt better to run a hot water shower, but there was only time for a blast of the highest setting of the sonics, and then dashing back out to shove himself into a fresh uniform. He allowed himself to fuss with the snaps on his tunic, to spend an extra moment tucking in his trousers into his boots _just so,_ because these things helped him not think about the other things. Sort of.

 

He still felt Ren stripping him, Ren's tongue on his neck, the big hands squeezing his hipbones, a finger dipping inside him, more hands digging into the small of his back, yet more tugging at his hair—simultaneously; he was surrounded by Ren, overwhelmed by Ren, everywhere, every sense, at once, more real than any daydream. A distraction, to say the least. Now one of the comlinks was buzzing so hard that it bounced toward the edge of the desk, and he scooped it up and bent to look at it reflexively. There was a scrolling message in flashing red on it, but the words might as well have been ancient Mandalorian runes, because he was being overrun by the sensation of Ren's tongue-tip flicking against the inner corner of his left ear.

 

Armitage Hux thought of himself, if nothing else, as a single-minded man.

 

Unfortunately, that mind seemed to have been entirely colonized by Ren. He tried to tidy his hair in the refresher mirror—it was stubbornly refusing to stay neat--but then he was imagining, or actually _feeling,_ Ren put both thumbs into his mouth, pulling his lips wide, running roughly over his tongue, practically fucking his mouth with these fingers that were, like the rest of the ridiculous bastard, strangely enormous. "Ungh," he muttered at himself, twisting away as though Ren were lurking inside his own reflection, which felt to be the case. He shrugged into his coat and fled his own bedroom at a jog; as he approached the pneumatic door leading to the main corridor, he slowed to a more dignified stride, but one still rapid enough to make colliding with what waited on the other side painful.

 

"What!" he squawked, then realized that it was Ren. The high collar was back.

 

"I'm leaving."

 

"What?" He still sounded like an angry quadduck, but that was really less of a problem than Ren standing so close. Though his eyes, cast to the flextile floor, told him at least the bastard's black-booted feet were an armspan or more from his own, he felt even more inescapably _trapped_ in Ren.

 

Surely the night had been a dream. But why could he feel the pulse in Ren's palms as they kneaded the meat of his shoulders, slid over the knit muscles of his ribs? And this Ren sounded not quite right. Maybe the Hux of yesterday would have thought, with a sneer, that Ren sounded like a man who'd stayed up all night fucking. The Hux of today was too busy fighting a civil war with himself. Unusually, the forces of curiosity triumphed over those of rational self-preservation.

 

But it still took incredible willpower to lift his chin, which he realized, too late, he'd neglected to shave, and look in the general direction of Ren's face. The scar was there again, twisted by a scowl of an intensity unusual even for Ren. He could feel Ren's eyes like drills—but when he forced his own to meet them, he saw that the other was looking away. The dark smudges under them were particularly deep today, and the usually bloodless cheeks had strange spots of feverish color. Still, the feeling of his flesh being plundered remained. He could feel his thighs trying to squeeze themselves more tightly together to take cover from the onslaught.

 

"Mustafar."

 

"What?" The quadduck in his throat had gone from indignant to slowly dying. He felt Ren's hand, huge and warm, wrap around his neck; another clasped his prick. But he could also _see_ them, and they were in the usual gloves, balled into fists at their owner's sides, a very appropriate distance away.

 

He would have been aghast, had he the neurons to spare, at how hard he was. Or perhaps he'd be more terrified for his life, as all his blood seemed intent on gathering in his groin. This particular pair of uniform trousers were, thank every star and moonrock, jodhpur-loose in the hips. "Why?"

 

There was an agonizing beat filled by the purring of the ship; a distant round of clicks in perfect synchrony marked a patrol far down the corridor. Was that a siren somewhere? Long long short short—extreme external conditions? He should care. And his comlinks were still buzzing and flashing like mad, clutched in his swampy palms. He should really care.

 

But he really, really didn't.

 

For not the first time in the last twenty-four hours, Hux felt like the insane words he shaped and poured forth were being emitted from his crotch and not his cerebrum. It'd be better to be strangled to death and left in peace than go on like this. "Are you running away?"

 

"No!" Ren was _actually covering his face with his hands_. This should have been a most satisfying sight, his enemy cringing from him, but Hux still felt those hands, gloveless, hot, on him, in him, smothering him. "I'm not _running_. I need—space. For the Force."

 

"Then--oh," he said around the phantom sensation of three fingers probing his mouth, clawing deep enough to make him gag, "Oh. The _scavenger_."

 

Ren dropped his hands. His jaw was actually a little slack with shock. "Are you—"

 

"Of _course_ , the scavenger." What was talking? It didn't sound like himself. It couldn't be himself. "Yes, girls _love_ a persistent suitor."

 

Ren threw his arms wide—Hux noted again how he was always able to get that cloak to flutter _just so,_ perhaps he spent hours in his training room practicing--and began to shout something, but was interrupted by a vast snapping sound that echoed up and down the corridor, accompanied by a tremor that flung Hux to his knees. Then the lights sputtered and went dark.

 

***

When they returned, in a deafening chorus of beeps and whirrs and clicks alerting him that _backup generators are go, emergency crews standby for instructions_ , he was already most of the way back toward his own quarters. Going fast. His aching muscles screamed _slow down_ , _lie down, stop_. "Shut up!" he screamed back. Made himself move quicker. It couldn't be Mother firing on them. He'd have _felt_ her, even through all the Hux that smothered him. A more rational inner voice reminded him, _She's got nothing left to hit you with_.

 

And absolutely it wasn't _her_. He imagined that Rey's presence near the _Conqueror_ would have been like a supernova going off in his head. _Those who need you,_ Skywalker's voice again. Stuck on those four fucking words. Immortal Gods of the Sith, how he hated it.

 

Well, _he_ needed Rey's fire. That pure energy. He'd find it, still. If he were in Grandfather's stronghold, pure, tall, impenetrable, he could. Seething with Darkness. Far away from Hux. They had just come out of hyperspace when he arrived at Hux's door, earlier. The beautiful obsidian castle and the Dark caverns over which it was built should be directly below the _Conqueror_ , now. He could make planetfall in no more than twenty minutes. There, he might be able to follow her. There, he might be able to leach out Hux's residue.

 

Involuntarily he slowed, remembering.

 

The flesh under his in the darkness. The pleasure sparking forth cometlike from it, which he _knew_ to be, but felt neither in flesh nor in mind. How inert he had stayed, positively monkish, through every tortured arching of Hux's spine, as he wrung groans and sobbing gasps from the slighter man and let them fall onto the wreckage of the bed. He wanted to slap himself. He tried to think of the absolute blackness under Vader's castle, the merciful silence, the infinite power, and through it, he'd have her again.

 

Then there was Skywalker again, prattling on. _Desiring will always be desire's downfall; there is no end to desiring. Give up what you think you need. Only then can you find what belongs to you._

 

"Shut up, shut up, shut _up_!" He snatched his saber free of its holster but did not turn on the blade, fortunately for the troop of technicians who suddenly flooded by him in an all-out dash, giving him a wide berth, a green jumpsuit sea breaking around a black boulder. Only one bobbed her helmeted head at him as she trotted past: "Supreme Leader, sir." The thoughts were blowing off them like steam, so that it took him no effort to overhear:

_Kriff I don't wanna die I don't wanna die I don't wanna die_

 

_Isn't that ape-eared Mudcrutch supposed to be the Leader now what's he doing here like a lump_

_I hope the next zap takes us out in one hit I heard burning's the worst way to go_

_Where's the General where's the damn General did the brat finally off him stars I hope not_

"Stop," he shouted at them. Some did, immediately, tipping forward; the rest knocked into their comrades, and soon more than half were tangled on the floor, groaning. "What is happening?"

 

The thoughts flooded him well before the sounds of their replies reached him.

He scowled at them. "Ion storm! Why didn't anyone alert me? Why didn't we jump away!"

 

"Y-you ordered us to the Mustafar system, sir. We're—we're in orbit. The storm's across the entire system," said the woman who'd called him Supreme Leader.

 

"Why didn't anyone _tell me there was an ion storm_!" He shook with rage as the responses floated on the surfaces of their puny little brains. " _Hux_ is not the _Supreme Leader_!" He ground his molars to avoid thinking about how Hux had squeezed eyes shut and ass tight, coming at the back of his throat.

 

"There you are! What the kriff are you all doing lying about?" cried a reedy voice as its owner rounded a corner. Mitaka, he fairly spat the name to himself as the man came into view. "Oh. Uh. Sir."

 

"We're jumping out of the system."

 

"Uh," Mitaka did not break the salute, but he licked his lips. "There's an ion storm, sir."

 

He gave his best snarl. "Is that my fault?"

 

Mitaka said nothing. A line of sweat slid past the man's jaw and landed in his uniform collar.

 

"Fine. Doesn't matter. Is my surface shuttle ready?"

 

"But, the storm, sir—"

 

"Is it _ready_!"

 

"It's—we had an outage in the hangar, sir—emergency partial lockdown, all small craft grounded—"

 

"Why," he said through bared teeth, "am I letting you live?" The red rage throbbed, fortifying him and distracting him from the memory Hux's cry of _Rennnnnnnnn_. He pinched the air with killing force. Six feet away, Mitaka's tongue began to loll from his mouth. His boots slowly rose from the floor. "Maybe. I. Won't." The technicians' weak minds united to chorus a single scream of _No_. It pleased him to hear it.

 

"Let him go," called Hux, rounding the same corner at speed and stopping just short of colliding with his lieutenant. He was flushed to the tips of his ears, and his hair was flopping everywhere like an angry small animal. Without the usual half-pound of gel to plaster it to his skull, it was quite long. Certainly violated uniform regulations. He shook himself bodily.

 

He'd dropped Mitaka while looking at Hux. The troop of technicians had wisely scampered away. Hux was kneeling over Mitaka as the lieutenant coughed and groaned.

 

"He'll live," he said, closing the distance between them in a single step, so that when Hux looked up at him it was from within his shadow. It made Hux's eyes very blue. "Once I'm on the shuttle, you can all jump away."

 

"You are a lunatic," replied Hux. It was as though Hux had turned into his very skin. Everywhere his hairs prickled.

 

"No one'll miss me," he said, which was not what he meant to say.

 

He turned for his quarters again. Why he hadn't gone directly to the hangar with his things when he first woke up instead of galloping off to Hux's door, he did not know. Maybe for the same reason that he was saying such weird shit.

 

"The hangar's on lockdown."

 

His feet stopped of their own accord. At least he still had enough willpower to not turn back, toward Hux. "I'll do a manual override. _I_ can pilot on full manual."

 

"Ren, there's an _ion storm_. One charge could take out all the other small craft if you open the bay door, and if a charge hit the blast door's inner shields, then—"

 

There was another huge snapping noise. The _Conqueror_ pitched slowly far to port, then evened out hard and fast. The lights dimmed, brightened for a moment, then sizzled out. The last thing he saw was Hux making what should have been a comical face. It would've been more comical if they weren't both upside-down with a wall rushing at their heads.

 

***

He felt it as soon as they hit the wall. The ghostly presence of Ren that had been _everywhere_ on and in him disappeared.

 

When the emergency power supply finally came on with a trill of sirens and a stentorian chant of _power emergency, code red, all hands to code red posts_ , he saw in the unsteady amber light what looked to be a pile of limbs at the base of the far wall. Mitaka had landed atop Ren and was able to half-roll, half-crawl off; Ren, face shrouded by his stupid cloak, was a perfectly still heap of blackness against the baseboard.

 

Lip curled with pain, he limped over, yanked away the cloak, expecting Ren's skull to have cracked and made a bloody mess on his beautiful waxed floor.

 

He wasn't sure how to feel when the bastard looked perfectly fine. Like he was napping. His arm was maybe bent a little wrong. And a slow snake of blood leaked from his nose.

 

Finally remembering his comlinks, hastily thrust into a jacket pocket as he chased Ren in the first blackout, he extracted them to find it spasming with Extremely Urgent Instruction Requests, most of them from when he'd still been asleep, duplicates from when he'd been dashing about his quarters. Chewing his lip, he scrolled through them, thumbs moving by habit.

 

_Coordinates set for Atravis Sector, Mustafar system, high planetary orbit, please confirm_

_95% chance of major ion storm in-system upon completion of hyperspace jump_

 

_Ion storm imminent, evasion improbable_

Then about two dozen auto-generated Emergency Notifications and Alerts.

 

"Sir," Mitaka said, unsteadily trying to pull himself upright by the edges of the light fixtures. "Should I call a med trans?"

 

"Oh!" Was Mitaka looking meaningfully at him? As he watched, the lieutenant lifted his blaster pistol free from its holster. Hux hadn't put on his blaster belt in the rush, earlier, but Mitaka's pistol looked to have survived the collision with the _Conqueror_ 's wall about as well as its owner had.

 

Ren still wasn't moving, but his breath, coming unevenly, did stir some wayward locks of hair.

 

There was an odd twitch in Mitaka's sweat-dewed upper lip. He offered his blaster to his commanding officer, grip-first, in a trembling hand. Hux swallowed.

 

There was no Snoke, ordering him to swoop in and save the mad bastard, this time.

 

He only had to reach out his hand five, maybe six inches, take the weapon; he'd aim for the heart. Then in a blink he'd be rid of this wild-haired monster. So easy. Like putting down an animal. He'd been one of the quickest draws in the Academy's history, and one of the best shots.

 

He looked down at Ren's scarred, somnolent face, illuminated by the trembling amber emergency lights so that the eyes and cheeks looked especially hollow, the nose, still slowly bleeding, casting a bladelike shadow across one otherwise smooth cheek. The mouth, lush and lax.

 

He felt suddenly dizzy, and had to stoop and put his hands on his knees. No. _Fuck_. He couldn't. He saw, in slow motion, the bolt enter Ren's chest over which the velvoid stretched taut, a neat black hole in its wake, then the blood, Ren's heart's-blood—he tried to breathe around his rising gorge. Then he put forward his hand and it floated nearly of its own accord not toward the gun, but—dangerously, _damn_ , he barely snatched it back in time—toward Ren's lips. "Urghuh," he said.

 

"Sir?" Mitaka solicitously stepped across Ren and took him by the elbow.

 

"Med trans," he croaked at both comlinks, bent over again, trying to suppress the whirl of nausea. "Upper H-level, sector A prime. Hurry it up."

 

He managed to keep it down through the five-minute ride on the med trans hovercarts to the med bay, through arguing his way to accompanying Ren's gurney into intensive care instead of being checked into the standard trauma area along with Mitaka, all the way up until the med droids were cutting Ren's clothes off before tanking him. Bruises everywhere, especially livid on his right flank. Nose still bleeding.

 

Then he saw, as scissors snipped at the cuffs of Ren's gloves, that there was something wrong with the arm—it seemed swollen, somehow twisted, and the droids' scissors were barely able to squeeze under the edge of the fabric.

 

As the glove finally parted like a banana's peel, he saw something pale suspended like a jag-edged moon against the black of Ren's sleeve, halfway between elbow and wrist. Then he realized it was the tip of a bone, sliced clean through the skin, and the droids were slowing again because Ren's sleeve was glued to it with blood. He gripped the alumide side-rails of the gurney as he sank to a crouch.

 

 _What the fuck pull yourself together you've seen men and women with their rib cages burst open_ _and their heads melted to nubs_ _this is nothing this is nothing this is_ Ren, _by_ _anything holy this is_ _a madman who any day now will murder you,_ he chanted at himself.

 

Above him, Ren gave a strangled cry as his whole body shuddered. The droids must be trying to sanitize the break. His death-grip on the gurney rail did Hux no good. "Hurrrgh," he said, and vomited onto his boots.

 

***

He tumbled out of the place with no senses, no light, no time, and into a strange cavernous space. All he could see were pointy shadows, bathed in a weak, flickering broth of light. He realized presently that he was again lying on a floor. He rose slowly though he knew he'd not feel any pain, nor even slightest stiffness. It was the officers' med bay. Lots of people. They'd put up partitions. He was in one blocked off on four sides by semiopaque polyskin curtains, with a single berth. Only the emergency lights, mounted in strips near the floor, were on.

 

With the familiar cool detachment, he looked at the berth, knowing what he'd find.

 

Hux looked very pale. Against it, his eyebrows were two dark slashes, angled downward in a frown. His hair was even more unruly than it'd been earlier, and stuck like wet orange yarn to his forehead and neck. The shadow on his chin, lip, and jaw was now full-on stubble. Under the single hypercloth blanket, he seemed naked. Ren himself was definitively so.

 

Again, Ren felt them: the riptide of Hux's desire. Hux's mind, murmuring to itself. Whispering his name. Not one long sound, but all together: _RenRenRenRen_. He leaned over the side of the berth. His bare skin pressed into it and he recognized, rather than felt, its metallic chill. Hux opened his eyes. Bottomlessly blue. "Gone again."

 

"What?"

 

"The scar." Hux actually looked _fond_ as he raised a hand and laid it against Ren's cheek, where the scar should have been. "The one you got from _her._ "

 

"You don't like her."

 

Hux blinked up at him, flushing, and began to withdraw his hand. "All right, this _is_ a dream."

 

"No." He knew his fingers were closing over Hux's, clamping them to his face. But he also knew he was drifting in a bacta tank fifty meters and several corridors away in the intensive-care bay, severely concussed, with three broken ribs and a punctured lung, a broken pinky finger, and a new scar forming along his forearm, where a splinter of his ulna had broken so badly that it poked through the flesh. "I don't think so."

 

"You're feeling talkative tonight." Hux was trying to sound airy, but Ren could see, in his eyes, the pupils slowly swallowing up the blue. He seemed to have realized that Ren had no pants on. The hypercloth did little to hide his erection.

 

"So are you." Ren put his free hand on Hux's cock. Its owner scooted away.

 

"I'm afraid I can't, darling." It was a bizarre sight, even stranger than Hux's face clenched in the moment of orgasm, Hux's _smile_. "Besides, they'll be coming to check on me in forty, forty-five minutes. Make sure my brain hasn't imploded."

 

His mouth moved, entirely autonomously, yet he felt each word buzz in his larynx, slip through tongue and teeth, reach the cool air. "Forty minutes is plenty."

 

Hux swallowed audibly.

 

"Only giving what you need." He felt himself twitch in the bacta tank as he slid a hand under the hypercloth. He spoke along with Skywalker, or perhaps Skywalker with him. "Only when you give up wanting, and want only to give _._ "

 

"Wh—" Hux bucked and groaned, then groaned again when he realized how loud he'd been at first. "Ugh—who are you—"

 

"Kylo Ren." His other hand joined its companion, briefly palming Hux's already moistening tip. Then it slithered between the surprisingly round cheeks of Hux's ass. His index finger traced the rim of Hux's hole and abruptly plunged within. “I am Kylo Ren.”

 

"Elder Gods!" Hux practically bounced off the berth. "Damn you," he said in a harsh whisper, upright, "there are at least seven others in here!"

 

It was never this easy for him, outside this—state, whatever it was, to slip into another consciousness. But doing so now, like doing so last night, was quick as a thought. _We'll have to resort to this then._ Just like last night, Hux seemed to melt when Ren entered his mind. He gently insinuated himself. Settled in, kicked off his boots. _Better?_

 

"I—I need—please," Hux said out loud. Hux's synapses were flashing blistering-fast images at him: himself naked, kneeling between Hux's legs, pushing them apart, somehow ramming himself home without delay.

 

Hux moaning faintly around the base of his cock as his come swelled around it and ran down Hux's chin.

 

Hux, face buried in the meager little med bay pillow, rump high and trembling, with a smattering of bright-red prints from his hand.

 

 _Give up what you think you need_. He stroked Hux's hair smooth and tucked one lock behind an ear. _Only then can you find what belongs to you._ He bent and returned the clumsy, bruising kiss that Hux had aimed at him the night before, but slowly, carefully, deliberately. With tongue.

 

As Hux gasped under him, the scrolling text in his head trickled coolly past: good; continue.

 

So he did.

 

***

General Leia Organa shivered awake. Her blankets had slipped; as she reached to pull them around her shoulders again, she paused.

 

There was a certain _lightness_ in the sadly familiar bunkroom of the _Millennium Falcon_ , where Chewie, Rey, Poe, Finn, Rose, and the other young ones had insisted she be quartered, though she'd insisted equally fiercely that she join them in the main hold. Then Rey had them all draw lots for the cabin, and Leia strongly suspected there had been some Force manipulation of the straws. It _was_ more comfortable, of course. She was still having some dizzy spells and nausea after the _Raddus_.

 

As soon as she noticed it, some of the lightness became vaguely man-shaped. "Luke?"

 

 _Quietly, sis,_ said the lightness.

 

 _Oh, Luke_. Leia sat up; she'd always found it easier to concentrate her thoughts upright. _What are you doing here?_

 

 _First of all,_ the lightness replied as though with an ironic little smile, _I'm_ always _here now. Also not quite here, sure--_

 

 _Don't be a dweezer!_ She rolled her eyes. _It must not be that important, if you're kidding around._

 

 _Oh no, it's_ very _important_. Leia had never imagined lightness capable of sounding _gleeful_ —and also something else she couldn't yet place. _Good news for once._

 

She sat straighter. _Well?_

 

 _Remember what you and Han would always tell me about Ben? Complain about, more accurately?_ She wrinkled her brow. _No no no, not painting his toenails black. No, not the fight club incident, either. Or the tattoos._ She sighed. _Yes, I_ know _they cost the price of a new freighter to get taken off him. No, I mean—you know._

 

 _Oh. That._ She quirked her mouth. _Well, he's certainly got his eye on a girl_ now _. How's_ that _good news?_

_Except,_ the lightness positively crowed, _except he doesn't! He's got his eye on somebody totally different._

Leia sighed. _Luke, I'm too old for this. I'm not a fiber in the weave of the universe like you yet. Tell me what you've got to tell me, I've got to go back to sleep._

The lightness seemed to hesitate. _I told him, when he was training, about the nature of being One with the Force._ It paused again. Leia kept her eyebrow raised. _Well, he's done it._

 

 _He's_ dead _?_ _That can't be, I'd have felt—Rey—_

 

 _No, no,_ the lightness hastily added, _he's only tapping into it. Temporary. And now I think he's got himself a boyfriend._ It let her blink in silence for a while. _Maybe not quite a boyfriend. But, um, at least a—a distraction. It'll buy you all more time._

_Huh._ She frowned, deeply. _Snoke's dead. So it's the ginger then?_ The lightness didn't answer. She started to say something, stopped herself, began again. _Is he happy?_

The lightness shimmered, shrugging. After a beat it said, _Sometimes._

_Well._ She released a breath and lay back down. _That's not too damn bad then. Thanks, dweezer._

 

_You're welcome, sis._

 

**Author's Note:**

> I pulled an inadvertent all-nighter in the wake of finishing this. Getting too old for this shit. 
> 
> (This is a rude way of saying, please forgive the haste and roughness. And thanks for reading!)


End file.
